A blog of much randomness! Follow along as we sew and craft our way through life, bake up a storm, grow our own groceries, play with honey bees, raise lambs and kids, with style along the way!!

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Handmade Cowgirl Country Christmas Tree Series, Episode 4: How to Make a Hand Tied Garland

The days are flying by and the "Cowgirl Tree" is close to being complete! I can't wait to share her with you! (I say her...this tree and I have spent a lot of time together lately so it is now a she!) I just have a couple more ornaments to do tutorials on and then she is ready for her big debut. I can honestly say that I am excited about my tree for the first time in my life! (I have never loved my tree before because it never felt quite like me!) All my trees before have just been decorated with hand me down ornaments and none of them went together. A Charlie Brown Tree for sure! Which is fine, but I have always wanted one like this! So I'm happy it's coming together this year. Not that it hasn't been crazy busy to make it happen!

I wanted the color scheme to be Browns, Tans, Cream, Denim and then accented with a Dark Red and Turquoise. And some metallic and bling. For the Turquoise element I wanted it to be strong in the garland. And I wanted a handmade garland. So I got some inexpensive Turquoise colored fleece fabric and then cut it into long stripes then cut many small strips to tie onto the longer strip to create a tied fabric garland. I then repeated the tying process using a cream colored tulle. Here are some pics of this project. This is simple and inexpensive. I think I spent $3 for the fleece fabric, I already had the Tulle. This garland does take time to make! The tying process is simple and easy, but it takes some time. Many of you may be at this point in the game be wondering...Why on earth is she making all the ornaments and décor for this tree when she can just go buy them!? And yes...this is true! There are many darling cowboy, cowgirl, western themed trees and ornaments out there. But the one thing that they don't offer is individuality! These you just can't buy! They are original to my tree. Yes, you could copy any of them and I welcome you to do so (that's why they are here on the blog), but just like gardening, canning and a lot of other "nostalgic" practices, making your own ornaments just makes it that much more special when you look at it. It becomes more personal. May sound weird, but it works for me! Hope you like her!!

Here I have cut a long strip of the fleece fabric about 1 1/2" wide then cut many strips about 4 1/2" long and about 1" wide

Here is the long strip and one of the smaller strips. I then tied the small strip around the long strip. leaving the ends of the small strip long.

Here I have tied 3 small strips to the long strip. Then I just repeated the tying process until I got to the end, then tied the cream Tulle in the same manner.

Here are 3 strands of the garland. Two have the cream Tulle, one does not yet.

You could make this as full as you would like. When I did the Tulle, instead of tying just one small strip, I tied about 4 pieces of Tulle at a time, to make it show up better. You could make it appear thicker or more full by using more strips at a time or just doing more strips closer together. I loved the way it turned out. I didn't want the garland to overwhelm the tree, but I wanted it to add texture and the Turquoise color.

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About Me

I'm Kacey Kalmar. Wife of an awesome, handy husband, stay at home mom of 3 fantastic little people. I play chef, gardener, farmer, seamstress, crafter, housekeeper, problem solver, Dr./nurse, teacher, taxi driver, laundress, psychiatrist, beekeeper, accountant, and fun director at this circus. (Please keep in mind that I have no formal degree in any of the above honorable professions.) I just enjoy pretending to be mediocre at all of them!